Spycraft, by professor Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman has been selected by History Today and The Economist as one of 2024’s best books

The Belgian-Dutch Bookbindings Society and the Consortium for European Research Libraries cordially invite anyone with an interest in bookbindings to attend.

Seven researchers from Leiden University have made a successful application to the Open Competition SSH (Social Sciences and Humanities) XS, a Dutch Research Council pilot programme.

The LUCAS Impact Committee, consisting of Jan van Dijkhuizen, Rick Honings, Casper de Jonge, Angus Mol, Thijs Porck and Aafje de Roest, has offered this year’s LUCAS Public Engagement Award to Dorine Schellens and Peter Verstraten.

Nineteen researchers who have recently been awarded their PhD are to receive a Veni grant of up to 250,000 euros. Science funding agency NWO has awarded a total of 158 Venis in this round; Leiden University's share of the awards is 12 percent.

Five researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This grant of on average 1.5m euros enables researchers who show potential to start their own project, lead a research team and implement their best ideas.

What does it sound like when you create your own words in Chichewa? Can you decipher hieroglyphs after just one workshop? Visitors found answers to these and many other questions during the first edition of the Evening of Languages, held in the brand-new Herta Mohr Building. With a sold-out programme,…

Two graves dating from the 7th century have been discovered during an archaeological excavation in Leiden. One of the graves was found by a student of Archaeology during the first-year fieldwork project that took place at the same time as the excavation. The well-preserved graves are interesting because…

Peter Burger is a university lecturer at the master in Journalism and New Media and co-founder of Nieuwscheckers. He now teaches the course Factchecken at Leiden University. He also supervises theses and internships and conducts research into the trustworthiness of news and messages on social media.

During the Faculty of Archaeology’s 2018 Field School excavation, in Leiden, two Early Medieval burials were encountered, as well as some house plans. One of the burials was found by Beatriz, an international student from Mexico. “When I found the pelvis bone it was clear that I had found a human sk…

During the summer, staff of the Faculty of Archaeology congregate in all parts of the world, initiating or joining fieldwork projects. Read some of their stories here!

Apply now for the LUCIS Summer School on Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim world, which will take place from Tuesday 15 August until Friday 25 August 2017 in Leiden. The deadline for applications is Friday 16 June 2017.

Home sweet home, by Arjan Louwen

Professor Ariadne Schmidt and Associate Professor Arie van Steensel (University of Groningen) have produced A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Leiden, the first English-language history of Leiden. Mayor Peter Heijkoop received the first copy.

From once controversial scientific works and historical bibles, to personal shopping lists and clothing bills. The 17th-century Bibliotheca Thysiana and the archive of the collector Johannes Thysius exhibit both the intellectual and everyday life as it was three hundred years ago. Now a brand-new digital…

At Leiden University many staff members and students value making sustainable and responsible choices in their personal lives. Making these choices in our professional lives may feel a bit more complicated. But is that feeling justified? Archaeologists Gerrit Dusseldorp and Roos van Oosten share their…

The Leiden Teachers Academy (LTA) was founded to help collaboration between excellent teachers. Osteoarchaeologist Dr Rachel Schats has been one of the latest additions to the Academy, nominated by the Faculty Board for the position as a Teaching Fellow. ‘In the LTA we talk about new innovations in…

The Rural Riches research group convenes for coffee on a daily basis. Remotely, that is, to prevent the spread of coronavirus. It is the perfect way to stay connected, exchange ideas, and socialise. ‘We now are more in touch with each other than in the usual situation when we are all at the Faculty.…

Mavlyuda Yusupova will be Central Asia Visiting Professor in November 2018. She will deliver two guest lectures for Leiden MA and PhD students.

This fall, LUCIS will have the pleasure of welcoming Professor Hugh Kennedy from SOAS University of London to Leiden. He is the fourth Abdulaziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation Visiting Professor in Arabic Culture at Leiden University.

Prof. dr. Frans Theuws has received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The 2,5 million euro grant will be used in a 5-year Archaeological study into the economic recovery of Western Europe after the demise of the Roman empire.

In 2019, Federico Cappadona was one of the first students to enroll in the new master’s specialisation Applied Archaeology. He recently graduated and he is happy to share his experience.

Upcoming activities by docARTES candidates Tony Roe, Patrizia Bovi, Ned McGowan, Maximilian Haft and Nizar Rohana

Richard Chancellor, the English Willem Barentsz, discovered the North Cape during the first English expedition to attempt to find a northeast passage. But the ship, the Edward Bonaventure, was ‘robbed by Flemings on its return in 1554.’ Historian Louis Sicking and legal expert Remco van Rhee found the…

An incredible quantity of archaeological reports are stored in digital archives. If you want to search for information in them, you have to do this manually. And that is a real chore. Archaeologist Alex Brandsen has now used deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to develop a search engine…

In the last weeks of May 2017 a team of students, PhD’s and postdocs of Leiden University led by prof. Frans Theuws excavated a small but exclusive cemetery from the late 7th and early 8th century in the town of Veldhoven in the southern Netherlands. Leiden University cooperated with the Town of Veldhoven,…

For the past 2 years, Dr Letty ten Harkel has been jointly running an excavation project of a suspected Roman villa site on the Balearic island of Mallorca with colleagues Dr Antoni Puig Palerm and Ritchie Kolvers, MA. The project was recently awarded a LUF Chastelain-Nobach fund to explore the extend…

Are you looking for some listening material for the upcoming long weekend? Staff members and alumni of the Faculty of Humanities have been creating various podcasts over the last few months. A selection is shown here:

The first congress of the UU Paleohub, 'The Future of Paleography, Paleography of the Future'. 10 april 2025

The Skandapurāṇa Project considers fieldwork to be essential to the study of purāṇic religious topography and the understanding of the socio-political milieu in which the Skandapurāṇa was composed and disseminated.

Most of us know that Venice, Genoa, and Florence were major Mediterranean powers during the Renaissance. But did you know that in terms of trade and sea power, Barcelona was probably more powerful than two of these three?

Corrie Bakels would have given this year's Kroon lecture on Friday March 20, but the event was canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak. Her colleagues had planned to present to her the 50th edition of the Analecta journal on this festive occassion, so these plans had to be changed as well.

Are you a night owl or a lark? Your lifestyle can affect your health more than you might think. PhD candidate Wietse in het Panhuis is researching this with the aid of jet-lagged mice. He explains in a Science Shot podcast

Rembrandt lived long before audio and video recordings were invented. But a group of researchers has managed to reconstruct his voice. How? Lecturer in Dutch language, culture and literature, Olga van Marion, explains in the latest Science Shot.

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is looking for two PhD's, for a research programme funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO): 'A New History of Fishes. A long-term approach to fishes in science and culture, 1550-1880', supervised by Professor Paul…

The research article ‘The life history of an enslaved African’ is one of the top 20 read Archaeometry articles in the period of January 2017 to December 2018.

Between 10 and 22 August 2025, Institute for Digital Humanities at the University of Göttingen, Germany, organizes its 4th Summer School in Digitital Paleography. Application deadline 30 April 2025

On 14 and 15 November, the LUCIS Annual Conference takes place in Leiden. Scholars from diverse backgrounds will come together to share their research on all branches of Shiʿi Islam.

Nadine Akkerman's book Spycraft, which she co-wrote with historian of science Pete Langman, has garnered top publications, with reviews featured in The Telegraph, Literary Review, The Spectator, History Today, and the Times Literary Supplement.

NOSTER, the research school for Theology and Religious Studies, organizes a Coptic Course in the fall of 2023. Students can enroll until October 1.

Archaeologist Roos van Oosten is studying Leiden's medieval cesspits. And on the basis of her work she reaches a surprising conclusion: the Middle Ages were no means as filthy as you might think.

What socio-cultural transformations did indigenous communities in the Lesser Antilles undergo from the late precolonial to the early colonial period in response to Amerindian­ European-African cultural encounters? How did Amerindian populations realign themselves in response to the colonisation…

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

AI has huge societal and economic potential and is widely used. But it also brings challenges: how do we combine human values with AI, how do we make AI more transparent and understandable, and what can AI and human cognition learn from each other, for example about language learning?

Leiden Asia Departments

This research deals with the royal houses of the Vijayanagara Empire and four of its successor states: Ikkeri, Tanjavur (under both the Nayaka and Bhonsle rulers), Madurai, and Ramnad. This study is thus concerned with dynastic politics and imperial legacies in south India between the 14th and 18th…

How were Spanish commanders fighting in the Low Countries between 1567 and 1577 portrayed in Spanish and Dutch narrative sources during the Eighty Years War?

When it comes to languages and cultures, Leiden University is the university. The global expertise present places our university at the top. In Leiden and The Hague, we study languages and cultures from all regions of the world and from prehistory to the present day. In this way we create a broad view…

English Language and Culture is a multi-faceted programme in which you’ll study the language in all its varieties, from Old English to the many different pronunciations currently in use. You’ll also study British, American and Canadian literature in their cultural-historical context.